Voetius studied in Leiden and in 1611 became pastor of Blymen, after which he returned to Heusden in 1617. In 1619 he played an influential part in the Synod of Dort, and 1634 he became professor of theology at Utrecht. Three years later he became pastor of the Utrecht congregation. His writings, Politica Ecclesiastica (4 vol., 1663–76) and Diatriba de Theologia (1668; “Discourse on Theology”) strongly censured any concession to Roman Catholic doctrine.

Learn More in these related articles:

in René Descartes

March 31, 1596 La Haye, Touraine, France February 11, 1650 Stockholm, Sweden French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher. Because he was one of the first to abandon scholastic Aristotelianism, because he formulated the first modern version of mind-body dualism, from which stems the mind-body...

...stretcher. The physician Henri Regius (1598–1679), who taught Descartes’s views at the University of Utrecht in 1639, involved Descartes in a fierce controversy with the Calvinist theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) that continued for the rest of Descartes’s life. In his Letter to Voetius of 1648, Descartes made a plea for religious tolerance and the...